What can save us from busyness? (Burnout, wk 2)
The most natural response to burnout in our culture, according to scholars of the Modern World, is a good response in many ways, but, alas, it can't save us from busyness. Vince explains, and point us to Jesus' alternative vision of a good life that isn't busyness.
Speaker Notes
Burnout, wk 2: What can save us from busyness?
Opening
- My first memory of burnout: I think of Ellen and Mallory, two high school classmates
- Presidents of student organizations, both in varsity sports, high achievers, popular girls dating the cool guys, accepted to elite colleges.
- But I have this vivid memory of gym class once overhearing a conversation where they were talking about how much time they spend on all the things and how driven they have to be to master everything, hold it all together, and meet the demands on them.
- I remember seeing a crack in the veneer for a brief moment, on their faces — a sadness, a malaise show itself .
- So young, and yet burnout was all over them.
- I felt the pull myself strong in high school and college —
- “you can be whatever you want when you grow up”
- just make sure you stay busy at it, so you can master it
- In my pastoral studies and as a young minister of a church I helped found
- I felt the pressure to master all the skills of the minister AND the entrepreneur
- Master sermon writing AND clever advertising
- Be the best church on the block with a unique mission statement!
- Master church growth, or else your church might die!
Whiteness -> busyness as fullness
- ==Theologian Willie James Jennings==, in his book After Whiteness observes that the pressure for mastery is built into the American education system — the thing that forms young people in this country
- And this pressure traces its roots back to slave masters and their sons
- Jennings tells the story of the emergence of Higher Education in North America in colonial times, and how it was actually born out of the need for an aging first generation of white plantation owners to pass on their plantations and slaves to their sons.
- They needed a system of values-transmission, to turn their sons into what Jennings labels “the self-sufficient man” — embodying the three qualities of a slave-owner: Possession, Control, and Mastery.==overlay off==
- Today, though we might be unaware of it, this horrific legacy of whiteness in American Education remains, pressuring us toward mastery.
- This is one of the big contributing factors to the ==500 year story== we started talking about last week —
- about how time has sped up,
- Modernity is a story of constant acceleration, advancement, innovation
- And in order to keep up, time has to be lightened of substance and higher values so it can move fast
- The justification of slavery and exploitation for the sake of an economy is the ultimate example of empty, light time
- fast, but evil
- With speed, rather than substance, as Modernity’s goal, the conception of a good, full life is busyness
- Which we have a love-hate relationship with, because yes busyness exhausts us and exploits people, but it also kind of excites us, makes us feel in demand
- We are trained young in the ways of accelerated modernity — to stay busy attaining mastery, consequences be dammed, so we can feel like we have a full life
Context
- Increasingly people are becoming aware of the emptiness and injustice of busyness=fullness, and cry out a need to respond, to break free of this,
- We acknowledge we’re burnt out, and we’re not just going to stay on the hamster wheel; we’re going to make a change
- That’s so good!
- So I want to visit today what our scholar sources for this series (we'll drop info on them in Discord again) believe is the most natural, instinctive response to burnout in our wider culture
- This natural response is not a bad response at all; in a lot of ways it’s a good response!
- BUT it is incomplete, and can actually lead us to double down on acceleration and busyness if we're not careful…
- Before we’re done, I’ll point us to a core theme in the teachings of Jesus that I think will serve us better ==overlay off==
- but it’s important we first talk about this most natural response.
- Because it’s so natural we hardly notice it. It’s behind everything we do.
- This natural response in one word is “authenticity”
Authenticity
Authenticity’s response to burnout sounds like
- You gotta take care of yourself
- Prioritize self-care
- Do what you need to do, not what others tell you to
- Be true to yourself
- Speak your truth
- Find your truth
Behind all of these is an appeal to authenticity.
Which says that the worst thing in the world is to be:
- a hypocrite
- or a captive to duty or conformity
- because they are inauthentic
What is good, Authenticity says,
- is to strive to be an individual,
- transparent and true to oneself
This is the ethic behind all other ethics in the Modern world,
- Some of us will have thick ethnic or fundamentalist-religious backgrounds moderating it a bit for us personally
- But other than that, unless you remember life pre-WWII, this is likely the dominant ethic for you personally
- That’s right, authenticity is so foundational, it encompasses boomers, gen x, millennials, and gen z!
Charles Taylor, one of our scholar sources for this series, calls the time we live in the ==“Age of Authenticity”.==
- The Age of Authenticity begins with the 1960s cultural revolution,
- when the Boomer generation post WWII came of age, with more prosperity and leisure time and education than any group of youth in the history of the world,
- and dethroned “duty” as our highest ethic, replacing it with “authenticity”
- Think the move…
- FROM the generations that lived through the Depression and fought in WWI and WWII (and how important duty was to them against such existential threats)
- TO the generations that protested the wars in Vietnam and Iraq and the proliferation of nuclear weapons
- That’s the move from duty to authenticity
- The reason I love this scholar Charles Taylor is because he sees that this move is neither all good nor all bad.
- He doesn’t have the vibe of a crotchety old guy saying “in my day people had morals”
- NOR does he have the vibe of a Silicon Valley ego maniac saying “all change is good change”
- He doesn’t see the Age of Authenticity as a loss of moral virtue,
- Like we just got it from celebrities;
- or like it’s just “sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll”
- He sees “sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll” as part of it, AND it’s much more than that too:
- It’s a legitimate moral vision,
- that prizes the individual and transparency
- and is critical of group-think and too much polish
- It deserves to be respected,
- It is a key ingredient to civil rights and justice and inclusion movements
- progress in a lot of ways from the Age of Duty.
- It’s kind of fascinating…
- “Authentic” is a compliment people often share with me when they appreciate this church
- And YET “authentic” is also behind why 40% of our country gives a thumbs up to Donald Trump, because he, according to them, “tells it like it is”
Why Authenticity is an incomplete response
Let me bring this to why authenticity is, specifically, not enough of a response to address societal burnout —
- It CAN push against conformity and duty
- And it CAN have a prophetic edge against dehumanizing workplaces or oppressive institutions by empowering us to take “self care” and “self definition” into our own hands,
- BUT… quick history moment… something horrible happened to authenticity just as it was starting to replace duty as our reigning ethic in the 1960s
- Anyone ever seen the show Mad Men?
- Basically, Mad Men happens.
- Advertisers and marketers realize: you know what sells so much better than “duty”? “Authenticity!”
- The duty to support the prospering post-WWII American economy could sell one car, and one washing machine to a white suburban family.
- BUT the pursuit of authenticity — THAT could sell a new car and a new home appliance every year!
- The average person today sees between 4,000 and 10,000 ads a day, and the pursuit of authenticity is behind every one
- Be your true self! — More, bigger, better, faster! —
- Ascend, ascend, ascend —
- Endless growth —
- The laws of Acceleration and free market capitalism now govern the pursuit of authenticity, not just the pursuit of profit
- Including our efforts at "the most authentic self-care” —
- our self care can always be more optimized, more convenient,
- with this new product or innovative service
- The freedom to authentically care for our self is, ironically, wearying
- Because, with the laws of acceleration in charge, being authentic is not as self-determined as we think it to be,
- The only way to answer the question “am I being authentic enough?” is to get recognition from others,
- so we have to perform our authenticity for others, finding better ways to express it to more people
- we’re kept in constant motion
- Authenticity’s prophetic possibility to cut against dehumanization and exploitation was blunted forever when it was made high priest of the American consumeristic engine by marketers in the Mad Men era. ==overlay off==
- And that’s why authenticity isn’t an enemy, but it can’t save us from societal burnout;
- because it’s been co-opted and enlisted into the service of the same authorities driving our busyness and our “more, bigger, better, faster” capitalism.
- Even if we’re perfectly authentic, the shape of a good, full life in Modernity is still determined by busyness, acceleration
- It’s the shape of a profit chart showing endless growth — ascending forever
Resurrection after death
So, if authenticity isn’t enough; what is an alternative vision of fullness that isn’t busyness?
Jesus presents a different ==shape for a good life==
- Not a profit chart ascending forever
- But the shape of a valley
Jesus taught:
“Unless a grain of wheat goes into the ground and dies, it remains a single grain of wheat. But if it goes into the ground and dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12)
“If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit them if they gain the whole world but lose or forfeit themselves?” (Matthew 16, Luke 9)
When his disciples are in an ego-measuring contest and ask him, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”, Jesus called a child, whom he put among them, and said:
“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” (Matthew 18)
In Jesus’ 1st century Roman world, because of high child mortality rates and a hyper-patriarchal society centered on dominance and mastery, children were considered “nothing”, “soul-less” even, until at least the age of 7.
And yet Jesus presents the “nothingness” of children as a model for his disciples.
Jesus’ vision for the shape of a good life
- Is not ascend, ascend, ascend forever…
- But a valley, with life on the other side
- “Resurrection after death”
- Fullness of life, in this case,
- is NOT marked by our busyness to keep up with the speed of life,
- but by our courage to stay in the present, even when that’s difficult
- it begins NOT with our mastery or coolness or authenticity
- but with our valleys — our humility, our lowliness, our nothingness —
- And, therefore, it’s founded in unconditional love,
- not recognition or achievement
- It recognizes life can be hard and won’t always feel happy
- It doesn’t pretend there are no deaths in life
- But it also doesn’t coldly interpret those realities saying “a distant, mysterious deity must have allowed them for a reason”
- No. It points us to the God who is like Jesus, who knows failure and death, and doesn’t run from it, but goes through it.
- Who enters NOT into our mastery, but, to use a word from theologian Andrew Root, who enters into our “negations”
- our failures, our sufferings, our deaths, our valleys
- our negations are the opposite of our mastery
- the things that destroy us, negate us, make us feel like nothing
- God enters into our negations to negate our negations
- to make nothing the things that make us feel like nothing
- Like my first ever spiritual experiences, in which I felt God helping me grieve after losing my mom to cancer
- God negated that negation — Cancer threatened to crush my future, but I was not crushed.
- That’s the shape of Resurrection after death
- And THAT is the good life.
- It’s difficult emotions too.
- But that’s sometimes where the good life is.
- This is the same shape that is all over our universe, hiding in plain sight…
- in the turning of the seasons,
- in the way muscle builds by tearing and reforming,
- in the way new galaxies begin when a star dies
- This shape calls to us.
- Even though so much of life seems closed, and it’s tempting in our secular age to assume everything is just material and explainable…
- This shape hidden everywhere calls to us — maybe there is more…
- Maybe resurrection comes after death, as unexplainable as that seems
Accelerated modern life convinces us we should run from the negations of our lives
- Just keep growing, going, moving, and you don’t have to look down or back
- Co-opting authenticity as its high priest, busyness keeps us on a never-ending journey
- for the next mountaintop high escape,
- or mind-blowing sexual experience,
- or perfect vacation,
- or brilliant life hack,
- or whatever,
- to try to move fast enough pursuing “our most authentic selves” that we outrun the deaths and negations.
- But we never can
- Authenticity is great, but it can’t save us from the societal burnout that Accelerated Modern Life breeds
- For that we need a different vision of the shape of a Good Life
- Resurrection after death ==overlay off==
Sacred time
Jumping off of Jesus’ encouragement “come to me all you who are heavy burdened and I will give you rest”, we talked last week about how we need an alternative timekeeping to run alongside modern life.
We need communities to keep for us ==Sacred time== — low burden but heavy time, so filled up with connection and purpose and intentionality that it can't move fast, and we can actually stay present in it.
Sacred time opens us up to the divine, to the God of Resurrection after death.
Keeping sacred time is not a direct addressing of personal burnout symptoms, like a workshop… it’s indirect and it’s communal. But in this way, I believe it treats the disease and not just the symptoms of societal burnout
Communities keeping sacred time together are readily stirred with love for one another,
- they enter into one another’s stories — the valleys and vulnerabilities
- they see those hurting or oppressed most
- they find themselves doing this willingly, they’re drawn to this
- and they welcome God there,
- to negate the negations of life
I remember maybe the worst year of my wife Keziah’s life
- Working as a teacher in a school that demanded mastery and keeping up with the accelerated pace of life
- She was burnt out, emotionally abused by a supervisor, and feeling like a failure
- I remember it was January, and we just weren’t sure how she’d get through to the end of the school year
- And then our community showed up
- One afternoon, half a dozen friends came over and helped her grade hundreds of assignments to get back to baseline
- And then there was a prayer time after church one Sunday,
- when several friends came around her and listened to her as she cried her exhaustion,
- and they welcomed God’s Spirit to be with her
- negating the negation of that horrible year
- Bringing about resurrection after death
Without communities doing this for us,
- The only prescribed response to our negations is to try to outrun them
- And that will inevitably compound our burnout
What communities have kept sacred time for you?
- Could be BLC
- Could be other communities too, that’s great…
- We try to normalize the patchwork that community often is for people
- Maybe you have a primary community, but then a bunch of secondary ones (BLC could be primary or secondary for you, either is great!)
- Who is keeping sacred time for you right now? Could BLC help? ==overlay off==
Ending
- My sense is that we all long for the kind of community experience that I described Keziah having,
- but often we may feel like we can’t seem to find it…
- especially if we used to have it in the past…
- What’s important to recognize is: without realizing it, we presume it is busyness that will help us find that kind of experience
- We feel reassured when our calendar is busy with community events or self-care experiences
- We feel reassured when a community or church is that way too with a busy calendar, full of calendar items we can put on our own calendars
- (BLC sometimes is reassuring in this way, or sometimes disconcerting… I hear both!)
- But then, of course, we are so busy that we often can’t make it to as much as we aspire to, and then a vicious cycle kicks in…
- We feel a strong urge to…
- either (a) apologize for not keeping up with church attendance because it would be “inauthentic” to not acknowledge that
- or (b) activate an internal shame response for your “inauthenticity”, which means you don’t apologize for it, but you just try way harder to avoid future shame
- both of which turn into an imposter syndrome identity: all these other people are so much more committed than me, I’m so lousy, if they only knew I was an imposter they’d cast me out.
- Basically we feel we have to choose between
- stick it out, but constantly berating ourselves for being so “inauthentic”,
- or disappear to be more “authentic” BUT feel lonely —
- Both those options suck!
- But they’re all we see if we think authenticity will save us.
- Authenticity is great; it’s not an enemy, but it will not save us from busyness and acceleration.
- So let’s raise our head up above the ground of authenticity, have some grace on ourselves, and be encouraged that the problem is not individual, the problem is societal.
- It’s NOT “personal” if you’re trying to facilitate something and people just don’t seem to commit,
- And it’s NOT “your fault” if you’re that person who just can’t seem to break free from busyness, and your commitments keep eroding.
- There are immense forces at work.
- So don’t give up!
- Let’s trust together in the force of love beckoning us into sacred time, where our burdens are lightened, and our time is stabilized.
- We cannot instantly snap away our experience of burnout,
- but a keeping of sacred time over months, years, decades is transformational!
- Because each time we re-enter sacred time,
- The God of resurrection after death, the God Jesus shows us, welcomes you every time,
- unconditionally, fully,
- you don’t have to try hard, you don’t have to be perfectly authentic,
- you are loved.
- Can you trust that?
- It takes experiencing it to do so, so let me pray for us.